“The Eristoff Invasion sound and lights setup in Bengaluru will officially be the largest for any concert in India. Delhi will be a close second. That’s 5,000 kg of cargo being flown in overnight,” tweets an excited Only Much Louder CEO, Vijay Nair mere days before the circus rolls into town. Aside from The Prodigy who will naturally make the most of this massive setup, second headliners Pendulum (who will be performing a DJ set at both shows) too, are all set to blow Indian audiences away.
“I am really looking forward to going to a country, of whose scene I have no knowledge and performing there,” says Pendulum’s DJ Paul Harding and adds enthusiastically, “I’m quite an adventurous person and so I am ready to take on all the challenges that could emerge.” While the DJ may not be too clued in about the scene, one thing he does know about is Bollywood music — but not for the obvious reasons. “The production on some Bollywood music is superb. There are some really brilliant producers in your country who work extremely well with percussion sounds. I’m bringing an empty suitcase with me to fill with CDs of their music,” he says.
The electronica act started off in Perth in 2002 and have since performed DJ sets and as a live band in equal measure at shows across the world. So what can we expect from a Pendulum DJ set? “When I DJ, it’s really a case of taking our music back to the roots of Pendulum, when we started off as club DJs. Back then we used to play virtually any electronic music that we were into, as long as it had high energy levels and was forward-thinking,” explains Paul and continues, “Even though we are a band, we play a lot of DJ gigs, where the main focus is playing remixes of our own tunes and playing what we believe to be a showcase of the best music that the world of electronic music has to offer.”
The band’s track Tarantula from its first album Hold Your Colour , Paul divulges, usually gets the best response at live shows, but off late, it’s been Witchcraft (off the 2010 album Immersion) that has been garnering the best response. “People do some seriously crazy stuff when we perform that song,” confesses a baffled-sounding Paul and adds with more than a tinge of disbelief, “At one show, I actually saw a person tearing his clothes off and at another show, someone was tearing their hair out. I have no idea why.”
But that isn’t where the bizareness ends. While India is obviously going to be a very novel experience for Paul, there have been some extremely weird ones in Pendulum’s seven-year history. “We’ve played some extremely tiny venues, including once when we played on a boat that was barely large enough to hold 30 people. This New Year’s Eve, I was performing in Los Angeles and suddenly I see 20 people brawling on the stage behind me. It was like a mini riot,” he says and laughs, “Then there was this gig in England, where we arrived at the venue only to find it was a strip club. The organisers had forgotten to mention that little detail and so there I was DJing while naked girls were walking around and people were showering them with notes.”
The story of Pendulum’s inception can be traced back to members of a rock band known as Xygen were inspired by some drum’n’bass music they heard at a rave, and wanted to explore the genre in a bit more depth. And as one would expect with a band like this, their influences are numerous. “I am primarily influenced by drum’n’bass from the late 1990s and early 2000s, but our music inadvertently ended up being influenced by everything else we listened to — metal, hardcore, punk rock. Those influences went into all three of our albums,” says Paul.
He elaborates that with Hold Your Colour, Pendulum consciously tried not to let their influences enter the song-writing process. “We found that we were effectively working against ourselves and were putting out music that we thought other people would want to hear, rather than making it from our hearts,” admits Paul and adds with a chuckle, “Now, we channel whatever influences come to mind.”
Paul counts Slayer, Megadeth, Metallica, Alice in Chains and Fear Factory among the bands that influenced Pendulum and performing alongside all of them at the same festival is unequivocally the biggest highlight of his career so far. “This was at the Sonisphere Festival in the Czech Republic and the UK. I was DJing on the stage right next to the one where all these bands that I grew up listening to were playing. That was pretty amazing,” recounts Paul. Another of the bands that influenced Pendulum massively is The Prodigy, alongside whom Paul and the boys have performed quite frequently.
“It’s obviously an honour and not something I ever thought I’d achieve as a DJ or as a member of a band. They’ve been around for 20 years or so and people our age grew up listening to The Prodigy. I often have to remind myself that I was a 16-year-old once and now I’m lucky enough to be sharing a stage with them,” gushes the DJ effusively.
Around three months since news of Eristoff Invasion began trickling in, the show is finally almost upon us. Any last words for the people, Paul? “I like playing to an audience that has no clue about who we are. So, come to the party. See if you like it. If you like it, you’ll really like it. In fact, even if just one person in the whole crowd really enjoys our music and has a life-changing experience, I’ll be extremely pleased,” smiles Paul.
Pendulum will be playing a DJ set at Blue Frog, Mumbai, on January 12